Ghost of the Echo
by Diary-chan
Summary: The 'true' story of Echo, a mountain nymph cursed by the gods and forever doomed to walk the Earth repeating the words of others. But not for long... Greek Mythology. Rated T just in case. Discontinued.
1. The Curse

**A/N: The true story of Echo. Enjoy.**

_Disclaimer: I do not own Echo or the story of Echo; both are elements of Greek Mythology._

**_The Curse_**

In a cave, deep inside the crevices and hidden catacombs of Gaia, Mother Earth, stands a statue. Surrounded by mildew and green moss, which clings to the craggy rock walls and glowing blue stalagmites and stalagtites, the statue is the only object within the cave untouched by time, weathering, and erosion. Not even the mosses and fungi dare touch it.

The statue itself is a true work of art. The eternal look of pain and long-suffering etched on her lovely, thin face looks as if she has been suffering all this time, lonely and silent, with no one to see her convulsions of expressive agony. She sits hunched over, legs folded diagonally underneath her, hands resting slightly curled on her lap, delicately tapering fingers grasping a love once lost in hopelessness with palms up. Her body is covered by an uncharacteristically short, apparently thin Chiton, a mantle draped haphazardly across her shoulders. Her voluminous folds of long, smooth hair fall around her in pools of silk. She wears no shoes or jewelry.

Yes. In this secluded cave, deep inside the comforting womb of Mother Earth, where no mortal has penetrated since centuries and perhaps milleniums ago, lies the stone statue that was the mortal container of Echo, the oread doomed to forever haunt the earth with her mournful repetition.

* * *

When I used to haunt the world as an innocent, pitifully un-feared nuisance of senseless repetition so many years ago, a form which young children gawked at and older ones ignored - such arrogant beings, humans are, to have forgotten the lesson that my own curse taught - I heard stories about me. Mostly in the homes of those in my old country, Greece. My story differs so much even now - especially now, after millenniums of oral tradition - that sometimes, when I think about it, I have to give a smirk and a laugh to myself.

They say I fell in love with a man named Narcissus and either pined away for the arrogant human till I was nothing but a voice, or that I was turned to stone and my ghost haunts them today in the form of a harmless voice. They say I was punished by the cruel and unforgiving Hera for providing a distraction as her husband eloped with my sisters. They say I was a wonderful singer, dancer, temptress, and that the lecherous forest god Pan punished me for my rejections of his love, having his followers tear me to pieces and scatter me about the world.

What they, silly, arrogant mortals, do not understand is that they are all right, and that they are all wrong. My story began hundreds - perhaps thousands, for I have lost count - years ago.

As they say, each folktale has a snippet of truth.

* * *

I was born so very long ago, when Gaia was young, to Zeus, the great king of the gods, and Dino, one of the inexplicably lovely Graeae.

I and my sisters, other oreads, frolicked among the mountains and sometimes were treated to a hunt with the great Artemis and her followers, nymphs themselves. We sprinted on the clifftops, chased the high-flying mountain birds, and ran with the speedy bucks that galloped past us on their glorious hoofed journey. Under the influence of the ever-chaste nymph companions of Artemis, who were my role models, I learned to scorn men and any of their foolish lust and fake love.

I was and would never be afraid to proclaim my superiority over my sisters in the areas of voice and performance; I gladly spent pleasant days entertaining Hera - who, if you were on her good side, really wasn't all that bad - with long yarns spun of fancy and true love, while Zeus frolicked with my love-hungry sisters. I was glad to do my father a favor, as long as he left me and my chastity alone - he was not above lusting for his own kin - over the years I had become more scornful of lust and tall tales of true love and more prized of my abstinence and chastity.

I was young then and had so far escaped the wrath of Hera for distracting her as her husband frolicked off with others of my kind, young and foolish and lucky to have never met a man that could overpower me or catch me on my quick feet or - in summary - take me by force.

Then the moody forest god Pan, who was a lovely musician, came to the mountains in a good and lecherous mood to entertain the great huntress Artemis and her nymphs, as well as a select few of the favorite oreads. We oreads were favorites of Artemis already - we were, of course, mountain nymphs, and the goddess of the hunt preferred rocky areas for her sport. I, even by the standards of my jealous sisters, the very mistress of voice and performance, was voted upon to help Pan to perform a lovely duet.

It was, I suppose, after he saw my lithe form dart across the makeshift stage and heard my clear-as-a-bell voice cut across the atmosphere that Pan decided I would be his, whether I liked it or not.

After the show, Pan cornered me in a little clearing, wearing a big, lustful, false smile as he complimented my performance. I, respectful of the gods, thanked him politely and showered him also with compliments, pretending to be flattered and showing him more dance moves when really I was cleverly trying to dart away whenever he got too close for my comfort. Eventually Pan, moody as he could be, got bored of our little game, as I was afraid he might.

My scream as he pinned me to a large oak tree at the edge of the clearing was loud and clear and distinctive enough that it brought Artemis herself running. The goddess found herself staring at me, my Chiton and mantle ripped in unsavory places, pinned down behind Pan. With a thunderous word of godly fury, Artemis banished Pan from those particular mountains where I and my sisters resided. I thanked the goddess of the hunt profusely, genuinely.

After that experience, my chastity became even more prized and I, like Artemis, began to shun men in general. I thought that I had experienced terror and pain then, but it was only the beginning - I was still oh so young and innocent, although maybe not as much as before. And had I known Pan better, I would have known he would have his revenge.

My pain was only just beginning.

As my luck was, less than a short decade later, Hera, queen of the gods, goddess of marriage, and consort of the mighty Zeus, went from being my sometimes-friend and audience to my very worst enemy and hater. She had, as luck would have it, found out about her husband's elopement and of my favors to him by keeping her busy.

Who had spilt the ambrosia?

None other than the grudge-holding Pan himself.

When I arrived by invitation at Mt. Olympus, presumably to once again entertain the unforgiving Hera, I was met by a party of all the men I had ever turned down, among them Pan, as well as Hera and even, for some reason, Aphrodite.

Here before me were all the people I had wronged - plus Aphrodite, whose purpose I still did not know.

They held a council as I watched, helpless, deciding what my fate should be for the wrongs I had done to Hera and the refusal I had offered to Pan and the other men. Aphrodite, as I soon discovered, was there because she was angry with me for being one of the only beings to be able to escape the binds of love - as well as for breaking the hearts of all these men. (Back then, men were much fewer, and the ones whose hearts I had ruptured were a bigger deal than they would be in a few milleniums.) She was infuriated for my stirring up romantic trouble in the first place - love chaos was her pleasure to indulge in, not mine.

As I watched with my stomach knotting up tighter by the moment, they reached a decision: to kill several birds with one stone. A prayer had come up recently from a girl wishing to get revenge on an arrogant, selfish man named Narcissus, wishing that he would meet with unrequitted love as he had done to so many others. They decided that I should pay for the hearts I broke and the love I resisted by getting my heart broken and my love resisted. This was enough to satisfy the cruel-hearted suitors and Aphrodite, who was confident that after the experience I would not meddle with romance again. However, Hera and Pan were still not appeased. They decreed that, quote, "The voice that has captivated so many will become now only a mockery of those that come before it and the lithe dance she once joyously performed will be no more, her movements hampered and clumsy." And last of all it was Pan, in a cruel mood apparently, who asked Hera if I could die - not one - but multiple painful deaths. Hera, of course, found this perfectly fitting, and I was sent back to earth to my fate without Zeus ever knowing that his time to repay my favors to him had passed, and now nothing could save me.

From then on, wary of the curse that had been put on me, I stayed away from males at all, terrified of my fate and trying to escape it by any means possible.

However, it was inevitable by the decree of Destiny and the Fates that I would find Narcissus anyway.

Of course, I had also been exiled from both the mountains that had been my home and the favor of Artemis and my sisters, the other oreads. So, I was one day, like every other day of my near-immortal lifespan, wandering aimlessly and trying to avoid anyone of the opposite gender.

I was so lost, wallowing in self-pity, that I did not notice that I had wandered to the edge of a special clearing until I looked up - and my curse was fulfilled.

He was truly beautiful; he had waves of white-blond hair that fell perfectly around his chiseled features and fine, square jaw that was gorgeously clean-shaven. He had a perfect figure, tan skin and muscles, his rainbow-glinting eyes staring off into a dreamy space. His lips were bow-shaped and dark, his nose perfectly straight and centered, his cheekbones high and even. He was so very perfect.

As the curse decreed, I immediately fell in love with Narcissus.

But I could not say anything until he said something first, because I was cursed to repeat others and not say anything of my own voice. I rustled behind the oak tree, causing the beautiful Narcissus to look around.

"Who's there?" he called, beautiful dark brow furrowing.

"Who's there?" I repeated, my voice a bit raspy from disuse. My heart was beating faster than a hummingbird's. I could hardly breath because the rapidly pumping mass of flesh was shooting around my chest in a ricochet, zooming up my throat then back down to my stomach in an endless dance with the butterflies that danced - more gracefully than I had ever done so - in my stomach. All I knew at that moment was that he must be mine, and I his, and to Tartarus with chastity. I wanted him so badly, and if he was not mine soon I would die of suicide if nothing else.

"Narcissus," he said.

"Narcissus," I repeated, voice warming up as my heart beat still-faster, watching him. Wanting him so badly it felt as if the beating mass that was my heart was going to explode from my chest either way, unable to keep away for much longer.

"No," he said discontentedly, "I am Narcissus."

I did not dispute him by repeating him and saying that he was not Narcissus, but that I was. Instead, as I could hold myself back no longer, I darted as fast as my now-clumsy, hampered form would allow towards him and into his arms. I was about to expire as for that moment I was pressed against him, could hear his heartbeat which felt so sluggish compared to my own, could feel the warmth of his skin, the flow of his blood as it coursed through his veins...

Was this love? This, hot, passionate, overwhelming sensation?

"Wha...?" Narcissus said, looking down quite bewilderedly at me, the dark-haired nymph clinging to his chest for dear life. "No," he said. "Get off of me... Leave me alone."

Instantly my heart plummeted and stopped as he threw me off, stumbling backwards into the grass as my eyes brimmed with hot, salty tears. He, a bit confused as to my reaction, stumbled backwards until he was out of view.

I followed him, determined not to give up. Not even remembering that Hera and Pan and perhaps Aphrodite and my other suitors were watching me and laughing.

I found him, after an hour of searching, staring flirtingly into a still pond. Confused, still-hurt, and with my heart hammering once again, I crept silently as my clumsiness would allow to see what he was doing.

He was looking at his own reflection in a stream.

"I love you," he told his reflection.

Eager that I now had something to tell him, I repeated it:

"I love you."

Narcissus smiled winningly into the water, almost making me faint, not even having noticed me and probably thinking that the gorgeously mesmerizing person in the water had spoken.

"You do? I love you too."

I knew he was not talking to me, but I so much wanted to believe him. I repeated part of his phrase, which was my only freedom in speech:

"I love you too." I said.

"No, I love you." He replied.

"I love you."

"Noooo, I love YOU."

"I love YOU."

"I love you more."

"I love you more." I choked out, realizing that my endearing words meant absolutely nothing to him, and that he was simply talking to the reflection.

I stayed with my sweet, vain Narcissus. He did not leave the pond. He did not move rather than to breathe, blink, and move his lips to utter sweet nothings unto the pond. I fancied my heart broke a billion times over watching him. I tried to feed him, but it was like I was not there. He waned away until his face was saggy and white and his muscles soft and pudgy, but I still loved him.

Eventually he starved to death, unheeding of the food I pushed to his mouth and the growling of his empty stomach.

And I was left alone.

Sobbing, crying, dying, I ran as fast and far as I could until I fell, exhausted long beyond the point of death. There I collapsed and breathed my last, pining away for the lover that never was.

I wasn't supposed to wake up again, but I did.

I woke up surrounded by savage, wild-eyed satyrs, Pan at the head of them, staring down at me, my hands and feet bound by magical means of imprisonment.

"How does it feel?" he asked with a wicked grin. "Love unrequited."

"Love unrequited," I repeated with the nastiest expression I could muster, reminding the cruel satyr-god that I could not answer, and that this was his doing.

Not at all phased by my mocking, he answered, "Oh. I forgot. The pretty Echo no longer has freedom of speech. Oh well, it was a rhetorical question. Must be absolutely terrible."

"Absolutely terrible," I confirmed wryly, feeling tears spring to my eyes now that the beautiful Narcissus had been brought back to my consciousness.

"Too bad about that, love," replied Pan, bending down to pat my cheek, which I recoiled from, disgusted.

His expression no longer playful now, he told his party of followers: "Have your way with her. Then rip her into pieces. I want to find no limb within a mile of eachother on Gaia, hear me?" The satyrs nodded as my belly filled with dread.

I would never like to look back on that particular memory, for it was full of pain and violation.

I was even glad for being scattered across the earth, for it meant that event was ending and that I could finally be at rest, forget my sorrows and my life as I drank from the river Lethe.

But no, Gaia, Mother Earth, gathered my pieces, putting me back together and, as I lay weak and tired and desolate in one of her crevices, consoled me as best she could. Perhaps Dino was my true mother, but Gaia was everyone's mother, and from so much experience on the job, she was good at it.

"Echo," she said to me, knowing I could not reply. "Your heart is not broken. Love via curse can never be true, my dear; what you felt for the vain youth Narcissus was petty lust and infatuation." However, as I still ached and pined for him, this seemed untrue.

"Fine," Gaia had told me, her voice hardening to be as firm as the rock she was. "You do not wish to heal yourself, you wish to die over again. Go ahead. I tried to help you, and my words were true. Remember them."

I did not move from my spot in that crevice and after years of death not coming, I finally experienced the third of my multiple demises: simple turning to stone, as my heart had been doing for the decades I had lain in sorrow and self-pity and bitterness. And as my heart had hardened, so had my body.

A broken heart either heals or hardens. Either way, it is never the same.

When I died for the third time, I was not resurrected.

I felt my spirit leave my body, but no longer did I wish to forget my past and my pain and my sorrows in the river of forgetfulness, Lethe. No. My heart, turned bitter, longed for revenge, and seeing as it was impossible that I take revenge on Hera and Pan, I was content to set off for the other gender of which I now not simply had an aversion to, but hated without mercy.

For those first few years - perhaps almost a century - when the echo - I would always laugh bitterly at the word originated from my name, my curse - was new to the world, I drove many men insane. They could not stop the voice in their head from repeating them, on and on. 'Who are you? Who are you? Stop it! Stop it!' They repeated and were repeated, and they thought it was demons unknown, haunting their minds when really it was little old me. Sometimes, for those who would particularly strong-minded, I would reveal myself to them in ghostly, translucent splendor to give the illusion of seeing things - ghosts, spirits, horrors.

Then, as few escaped my wrath, leaving madness in their wake, news of the echo, the spreader of insanity, reached the ears of the humans and for precious decades and perhaps centuries more I was among the most feared forces - aside from the gods themselves - on earth.

I wandered and I was invisible to them, the humans, because I so chose to be, but I had my fun; enjoying the cruelty and chaos and madness I spread around. Enjoying my general power.

But then? Then a horrible thing happened. Then people, faithless, unreligious people, began to ask questions whose answers were not satisfying to them. They refused to believe that I was real. They searched for true answers, and in an ironic turn got a fake one. They came to the conclusion that I, the echo, was caused only by sound bouncing off smooth surfaces. That I existed only in caves and other enclosed spaces.

Lies, lies, lies.

But alas, these lies were believed, and what once once a feared force of chaos and madness was now a common nuisance.

Very sad, if you had asked me then.

Now no one went insane as they heard my voice repeating their words. No one cared at all. Everyone thought that my voice was simply a fact of 'science', harmless and useless.

Oh, I knew Hera and Pan were laughing then.

My time on the earth was done, for I could do nothing else to affect mankind. But as it was I and my heart of stone were not quite ready to leave.

However, I still did not know how I was going to keep sating my unquenchable thirst for revenge.

I was granted my answer one day while morosely wandering around northern Europe - England, to be specific, somewhere around the capital around the 1250s.

A young woman who looked about the age that I appeared to be walked with a young man about the age and build of my oft-remembered Narcissus - instantly, the young male became hated with a vengeance in my mind for reminding me of my lost love. This was what I had become; what I had resorted to. Hate empty of action because I was powerless to do a thing. But I watched on.

"John," said the woman, who was a lovely, big-busted blond. "We need to talk." I had heard that line before, and knew what was coming next. Eagerly I awaited it. "We need to break up. I can't take this anymore," she continued. 'We need to break up,' I mouthed silently, feeling my invisible eyes widen as I found my answer. Still, I loved these scenes, so full of pain and sorrow and agony that came almost close to perhaps a fraction of the pain I myself had felt for Narcissus, so I stayed through the end.

"But Mary Jane... you said... that you... loved me... We're going to be... married..." The man looked desperate and lost, clutching the hand of the woman.

"I know what I said, John, and then I thought I did love you. But I don't... and I can't pretend anymore..." Mary Jane said, a tear rolling down her cheek as she jerked her hand out of John's.

This was followed by many 'but's, and in the end, it was the young man who left, tears clearly in his eyes. The woman, Mary Jane - what an incredibly stupid name - looked sad and guilty as she walked from my view. Because of that, in my mind she was as pitiful as he.

_'Now I understand',_ I thought,_ 'I've figured out how to get my revenge... The more they love you... the more it hurts... when their own hearts get stomped into the ground...'_

My plan, simple as it had seemed, was to simply start to reveal myself to the humans at all times, capture the heart of an individual of the opposite gender, then crush it beneath my heel as I moved on to the next. So simple, so beautiful, so seemingly easy. However, as I would soon realize with my first tries to put my plan in action, it was not as simple. My permanent ghostly form was, for one thing, was intangible - and touching, kissing and the likes played a big part in capturing a heart. Plus, I was translucent, which was apparently a big turn-off...

So, I decided rather childishly and recklessly, it was Zeus's turn to repay the favors I had done him by distracting his wife while he was free to make love to any woman he chose.

Even the King of Gods couldn't undo my curse - one god was not allowed to reverse or destroy the doings of another - but since my contract, for lack of a better word, had been painfully specific and narrow, it could be circled. Hera had stated specifically that my voice would only repeat and my grace would be gone, but she had not specified that I had to possess my repetitive voice, just that it must repeat. Nothing was said against it wandering the world on its own. She had also stated that I would die multiple deaths, but who was to say that I was forbidden to walk the earth as a mortal once again after those deaths?

I found him frolicking and eloping with young maidens, as usual, in northern Europe, just north of where Berlin would later be, I believe. He took the mortal form this time of a blond youth that came close to being comparable with my former unrequited love, Narcissus. Hated my love and all males, I did, but even I was not in enough denial to brush off Narcissus's beauty. Perhaps deep down the passion I had felt for him still smoldered.

In any case, he was playing a childish game of hide-and-seek with a young dark-haired, olive-skinned pretty. However, she was barely past childhood and I could only help but wonder if Zeus meant to spirit her away until she was more mature and becoming. She had great potential. Invisible, I waited until Zeus bid her goodbye - she had to get home - and promised to meet her here tomorrow. It was strange how the usually impatient and arrogant lustful Zeus could summon such patience when it came to the actual women.

Never mind.

As the sun set and he prepared to go wherever he was going to spend the night, I showed my ghost to the King of Gods and watched as his youthful blue eyes widened in surprise.

"Echo?" he asked, recognizing me even though I was dead. "Is that you?"

"Is that you?" I repeated to him.

"So it's true," said Zeus, stroking the stubble on his firm jaw. "Hera did get to you."

I nodded.

"I apologize," Zeus said, "That you are cursed as such on my account simply for granting me a favor-"

I shook my head, eyes apathetic and distant. "Granting me a favor," I said, repeating the last part of his words.

"Ah... you wish me to repay you for your favors?" Zeus inquired, eyebrow raised as I nodded. We both knew I had been incredibly reckless to outright ask - one might even say demand - that he return to me a favor that I had granted him. With Zeus's uncertain temper, to approach him in a bad mood would have meant a punishment worse than my curse. But, since I had no purpose anyways if he refused it did not matter to my heart of stone. This was how reckless and bitter and vengeful I had become. Years ago when I was young and stupid I would have been repulsed and horrified of the beautiful monster I would later turn into.

But now I stood, unashamed, staring evenly back at the King of Gods who had the power to put me through unimaginable pain...

Who smiled devilishly and stroked his stubbly chin, feeling merciful this day as his wooing of the innocent, unsuspecting, too-young maiden who had just left was going well. He had just agreed to our contract.

And once I managed to explain to him my plan...

I would reap my revenge for the rest of eternity.


	2. The Revenge

_Disclaimer: I do not own Echo or her story. Both are part of Greek Mythology._

_**The Revenge**  
_

In a cave, deep inside the catacombs and crevices of Gaia, there used to stand a statue. Surrounded by mildew and green moss, which still clings to the craggy rock walls and glowing blue stalagmites and stalactites, the statue was, in its day, the only object within the cave untouched by time, weathering, and erosion. Not even the mosses and fungi dared touch it.

The statue itself was a true work of art. The eternal look of pain and long-suffering etched on her lovely, thin face looked as if she had been suffering all this time, lonely and silent, with no one to see her convulsions of expressive agony. She sat hunched over, legs folded diagonally underneath her, hands resting slightly curled on her lap, delicately tapering fingers grasping a love once lost, in hopelessness with palms up. Her body was covered by an uncharacteristically short, apparently thin Chiton, a mantle draped haphazardly across her shoulders. Her voluminous folds of long, smooth hair fell around her in pools of silk. She wore no shoes or jewelry.

Yes. In this secluded cave, deep inside the comforting womb of Mother Earth, where no mortal has penetrated since centuries and perhaps milleniums ago, used to lie the stone statue that was the mortal container of Echo, the oread doomed to forever haunt the earth with her mournful repetition.

But, as was said, this was in the past. No more does this cave contain this statue. The body of Echo has been put to better use...

* * *

When I used to haunt the world as an innocent, pitifully un-feared nuisance of senseless repetition so many years ago, a form which young children gawked at and older ones ignored - such arrogant beings, humans are, to have forgotten the lesson that my own curse taught - I heard stories about me. Mostly in the homes of those in my old country, Greece. My story differs so much even now - especially now, after millenniums of oral tradition - that sometimes, when I think about it, I have to give a smirk and a laugh to myself.

They say I fell in love with a man named Narcissus and either pined away for the arrogant human till I was nothing but a voice, or that I was turned to stone and my ghost haunts them today in the form of a harmless voice. They say I was punished by the cruel and unforgiving Hera for providing a distraction as her husband eloped with my sisters. They say I was a wonderful singer, dancer, temptress, and that the lecherous forest god Pan punished me for my rejections of his love, having his followers tear me to pieces and scatter me about the world.

What they, silly, arrogant mortals, do not understand is that they are all right, and that they are all wrong. My story began hundreds - perhaps thousands, for I have lost count - years ago.

As they say, each folktale has a snippet of truth.

But! What they, in their arrogance, do not know even now, is that my story does not end with my death. Oh no. What they do not know is how I was resurrected from death for a third time and walked their world to exact my revenge...

* * *

It took while to try to explain to Zeus what I wanted - a while and lots of props, signals, and gesticulations. Demoralizing, truly humiliating it was, running around like an idiot trying to mime being alive again and the loops in my 'contract', repeating things he said when he guessed right - demoralizing and stupid, but worthwhile and necessary.

He seemed to be amused by the whole process, and when he laughed at me I tried not to roll my eyes or sigh silently in exasperation. Honestly, he was like a picky, bratty child.

After two weeks of working around times when he was pursuing a maiden, Zeus, who was not the cleverest of gods, had the gist of what I wanted.

And so, once again, in the year 1253AD, I was once again human.

It became difficult, of course, to find clothing more suited to the time, but a few awestruck peasants were all too happy to, when I approached them, exchange my Chiton for a more conventional dress. (I kept the mantle as an eternal reminder.) It was quite a pain to get them to understand me since they could not read or write, but I managed without much difficulty. I suppose they had thought I was a spirit of some sort, long brown-auburn, wavy hair splayed loose around me instead of in a normal bun, eyes the most peculiar color of violet, ears that, if they had caught sight of them, tapered to an elfen point, a a body that looked clean though it was not the season of the yearly bath, a face possessing otherworldly nymph-like (ha!) beauty, dressed in only a short, flowing white thing that could have passed as a nightgown or undergarment - and with no shoes on my feet, no less! I realized I must have gave them quite a scare, but that did not matter, for I was on my way.

I moved to the next manor community and, using the charm only an oread possesses and the lord's love of pretty women, I secured a position as a maid in his mansion. It was not as difficult, for the lord was learned man, and I had long ago during my eternal wanderings bothered to pick up English and learn to read and write it - as I had done with many other languages. It was not so hard and I figured that someday I would need it, so I had gone ahead and looked over the shoulders of those reading books and listened and analyzed the gestures of those who spoke another language.

The lord conveniently presented me with a useful notebook and pen, which I was careful not to waste on words I could get across with gestures.

That particular manor community, of which they called Greenfarm for its fertile land, was large and prosperous and not at all short on young, innocent bachelors, and less than a week after my arrival at Greenfarm I had received several invitations of courting; one at a time, though, I had to proceed.

And so it started from Greenfarm, where I developed a reputation as a beautiful, silent, mysterious, fickle, uncommitted, heartbreaking, cheating, home-wrecking woman who was despised by all of her gender. Many had asked how I came to be dumb but I did not tell, or otherwise made up some fake story which somehow got spread around. However my track record with honesty and adultery and affairs and so-called "man-stealing" did not keep my suitors away. Instead I had more than ever - the temptation of my mysterious, silent unconquerability was too great and glorious a challenge for any man to resist. Ah, the stupidity.

Greenfarm would forever be a memory I would fondly recall, for then was when love was innocent and men were so trusting - and fell so hard. But as all good things must, my time there came to an end as, after several years when I did not age (for, of course, I was a nymph whose youth and lifespan lasted next to an eternity) the villagers became suspicious of me. So, one morning, they found me and my things gone, along with the expensive gifts I had received from various courtiers.

And so it went similarly through the Middle Ages, as I traversed through time and centuries without looking a day older, leaving a trail of crushed and broken hearts in my wake. By then the extreme heartbreak I had left behind me, that huge swath of destruction in my wake, should have more than compensated for my own pain with Narcissus. But no. It was not, perhaps, satisfying to me simply because I was not happy with the pain being equal to mine only when combined. I wanted to develop crueler, more twisted ways to cause pain, in hopes that one day I would find the perfect technique to cause as much pain, if not more than I had suffered. Perhaps it was because Aphrodite had managed to grant humankind the power of hearts to heal; when the hearts of men healed I had to start over again. Aphrodite, of course, did not bother me much, either because I was still unofficially under the protection of Zeus, who perhaps found it amusing of my meddling in human affairs or maybe just took a liking to my boldness, because the gods less and less began to intervene so unsubtly in human affairs, or perhaps just because she felt that now that humankind had the power of healing hearts, I was not a problem. The healing hearts presented a problem for me. A broken heart either heals or hardens, but either way it's never the same - that was my philosophy. With my luck all the hearts I broke managed to heal.

The simple solution was that they did not love me enough. I had to make them love me with all of their hearts, and then my mission would truly begin.

My air of mystery and my looks were not enough to inspire true, deep love. As I discovered from witnessing as I took a break from the action in the 1500s, for the rare, true, heart-hardening love, a man had to love not only my looks but my personality and my true self.

The issue with this was that my soul, my personality, my true self was ugly and unattractive. I was a beautiful, totally wicked woman, and I was sure there were few men on the Earth who could truly love me if who I was was so... repulsive.

However, it was only by the 1700s that I was able to put the technique to use. I knew that to truly compensate for myself, to truly exact revenge on these innocents, I had to make these men love me like I had loved Narcissus - every fiber of their beings wanting me eternally, the willingness to commit the most painful suicide if only I would look at them. But how?

It was then, in the 1700s, when I became the self-proclaimed Shapeshifter. This was so easy. All I had to do was observe my target and what he was like; then alter my personality and my morals and my heart to their best interests.

This technique, of course, was better - but not the best. I still felt empty. My love for Narcissus had been god-assisted; the love they, the men, had for me was only what I could manipulate their own hearts to do. I was empty and somehow this more devastating, cruel technique made me even less happy and fulfilled than the shallow way I had previously managed to devastate where the hearts could heal. It should have been more satisfying - the hearts I broke didn't heal as well or as fully or perhaps not at all, despite the fact that this method took quite a bit longer (and to Aphrodite, it apparently did not matter that the I broke were beyond repair, just that I did not hurt so many. I believed and always would that the goddess was too involved with her own affairs to care, and that the only reason she had had anything to do with cursing me was because she had been bored.) But, contrary to what I believed, as time went on and the number of hearts I killed, the emptiness inside me grew and grew until it was at the point that I began to feel guilty about hurting so many.

This would not do. My heart of stone was breaking and from inside the shell, my live, beating, love-capable true heart was beginning to emerge.

The only way to repair my facade was to harden it again.

And to do that, I knew there was only one way.

During those weeks when I once again visited my home country of Greece, visiting the exact spots which had before caused my heart to harden - as close as I could get to the clearing where Pan had pinned me down; the glade where I had cried myself to death; the rocky cliffs where for a third time I had met the lecherous forest god and his satyr followers who had torn me to pieces; even the cave which only I knew existed where my stone body had once lain.

Each place I visited, I felt my heart shrivel more and more, and felt it harden and turn to stone with each also. However through none of the euphoria had I cried; no. I refused to show such human weakness.

Last of all, I paid a visit to the pond-bordered clearing in which I had first seen Narcissus. I stared into the water where he had once stood, loving himself vainly.

And then, for the first time in centuries, a single tear slipped from my violet eyes.

It was complete; my heart, my center of emotion, stopped beating and at last the shriveled lump was once again cased in a harder, thicker layer of stone.

I killed myself that day.

It had been a long, long time since I had lost myself. Centuries ago. I didn't know exactly when or where it happened, just that I was no longer the lively, beautiful (in body and soul), kind-hearted nymph I had been as I frolicked, oh so very long ago, with my sisters.

But now I felt that I was permanently lost and what I had once been would never surface.

I returned to my favorite part of Europe, the area of England. Once again I began my methodical process of crushing hearts into the ground and assuring that they would never quite heal, and that I would leave my mark on them all. This I did using only sign language and gestures and a notepad. With love, words tend to get in the way. Their eyes tell it all. So it was just as well that I could not sabotage myself with words.

In the seventeen fifties I impulsively decided to take a voyage to North America, and the new British colonies there.

I paid with the money I had gathered from gifts bestowed upon me by suitors rich and poor; I had made sure to get into the favor of old wealthy men so as to inherit the money from their wills. Shallow, but it was my livelihood and my revenge.

When I arrived at the American frontier, I found that it suited me best. I came ashore in Virginia after a three-month-long voyage to the new, fresh style, so much different from classic, stuffy England, where I had of late spent most of my time. I also found that the climate was warmer, more akin to that of my home country of Greece.

Hair in a curly bun, wearing a fine floral dress and bonnet, I made my way into the Americas as the wealthy, notebook-laden Mrs. Jayne Dougherty, a young, beautiful, grieving widow, who had, from the grief of losing her husband, had lost her voice. This, I knew was another temptation for the chivalric, kind-hearted type - comforting a grief-ridden widow - one of whom I easily picked out and selected. He was another young fellow on the ship who had come from England.

His turn came accordingg to plan, and I left him at the altar, making a big, melodramatic exit with another man I had been also involved with. Adultery was one of the best ways to break a heart.

Much of his successors went the same way, according to plan and with a heart nearly beyond mending at all.

As with everywhere else I had established a home, after several years as the ageless Jayne Dougherty, I left via private wagon for the western frontier.

And so it went with I, moving across the colonies and, later, after the Revolutionary War, across the country. It did not matter to me the wartime; during wars I became a nurse or a watergirl for the soldiers, on the front lines where the men were plenty. I had done much the same in Europe, though staying out of the more battle-ridden areas and keeping myself to the relatively quiet land of England. Of course, during the Civil War I kept to the north, where factories and conveniences prompted me to stay.

So it went, breaking hearts of common soldiers to farmers to the independently wealthy; it took time, yes, but I had next to all of the time in the world, no?

Through to the 1900s and the Great Depression, in which I was not forced at all to give up my luxurious ways; through the World Wars, during which the USA, though in a state of worry and panic and uproar, was unaffected otherwise; unaffected as to my purpose. Men still had hearts to break.

Through all of this I felt little; only a fraction of the immense pleasure heartbreaking would have stirred at one time in my stone-dead heart; just emptiness. It did not fade. It grew, second by second. It was simply there, and that was enough to make me rethink my revenge and my purpose. I did not feel guilty, nor happy... I felt next to nothing. Even when enacting my own cruel, twisted breakup scenes, there was nothing - a mere fraction of the cruel, sadistic joy that it would have once brought me.

Ever since I had ventured, centuries ago, to re-harden my heart, nothing had been the same. That emptiness grew and grew and my sadistic cruelty, my emotions grew less and less. It made my revenge meaningless! And a meaningless vengeance was no vengeance at all.

Through the fifties and the sixties, as my fortune and my luxuries grew, I even began to consider giving up my revenge - if it was meaningless, why waste precious time exacting it? But of course this idea I found to be ludicrous. I was becoming something I had never known - not the young, laughing, innocent oread I had been for only those first decades; not the cruel, sadistic heart breaker and home-wrecker I had been for most of my life up until recently.

What I was now was an indecisive, stone-hearted maiden caught between romantic revenge and an empty hole.

And so it continued, a swath of heartless destruction in my wake, through the seventies and the eighties and the Vietnam War, which, again, did not effect me all that much; luxuries grew and so did my nostalgia of the days of Ancient Greece.

The nineties came and went, modernizing through and through.

By 2002 I had sold the big, beautiful, red-bricked, rustic, mansion-like house that I had lived in and owned via different personas in cycles, pausing every once in a while, leaving it for a few decades then coming back to since the seventeen hundreds. I packed up for the city life in the expensive Manhattan apartments, the hustle and bustle, the Big Apple - where there were more people there were more opportunities for me.

It was by that time that I literally felt nothing anymore; not even traces of what was once my livelihood reached my secluded mind. The hole, the horrid empty hole I had not been able to get rid of since I had paid my second visit to the clearing in which my heart had fallen and broken for Narcissus, had grown and expanded until it had encompassed my heart and my mind - my memories, my world, my soul was now in black and white. I was a blank, dull canvas, but I had not a pencil nor pen nor paintbrush to color myself with.

I was a black hole, unfeeling, unbreathing, unliving - I was even more a stone statue now than I was when my body had been a petrified lump in just a single of the countless crevices of Gaia.

I knew that both of the earlier Me's - the young, innocent child and the cruel, sadistic heart breaker that I had each at a time been - would have been disgusted to see me now, the unfeeling lump of matter that contained nothing but a stone heart and emptiness.

But... there was nothing I alone could do about it.

And, sadly, I doubted there would ever be.


End file.
